


Wedding Rites

by Dead_Waltzer



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Femdom, Loss of Virginity, My Unit's name is Princess Naomi, Porn with Feelings, Xander is an unexpected virgin, mozu is...not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28017528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dead_Waltzer/pseuds/Dead_Waltzer
Summary: Xander and Mozu are married in the midst of a war between their countries, and there is one particular marriage rite that Xander is quite skittish about fulfilling.
Relationships: Camilla/Odin (Fire Emblem), Marx | Xander/Mozume | Mozu, My Unit | Kamui | Corrin/Suzukaze | Kaze
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Wedding Rites

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, yes I decided to write a smut fic. This is also kind of a character study for Xander, because I imagine him as having problems with intimacy after everything he went through and grew up with. But he is the sweetest husband to Mozu and I just had to write something for them. Enjoy! :D

“It was beautiful, older brother,” Camilla says softly. 

She’s holding a basic rune book in one hand and aiming the other at the last of the rose petals lying still on the green grass of Naomi’s courtyard. A few murmured words later, and she’s blasted them away with a gust of magic wind. The petals flutter and dance in the air before twirling back down to the ground. 

The sight is lovely, Xander thinks now. He had never been one to stop and take in loveliness when he saw it in the past, too focused was he on battles and strategies, executions and conquests. He’d never so much as looked at one of the ornately clothed dancers that the castle butlers would hire at banquets and parties with more than a thought about whether or not they could constitute a breach in security. 

Beauty was of no interest to him until he met his wife.

“It was,” he agrees quietly. And then, in a slightly louder voice, “Camilla, you do realize that these petals are just getting scattered around the grass, correct? You’re not actually cleaning anything.”

Camilla laughs softly, pouting slightly. She’s dressed in her finest Nohrian ball gown, her hair done up in silvery netting. Her daughter, Ophelia, who is practically her miniature was dressed in a similar, slightly less revealing outfit before she went off stargazing with her father and cousins. 

“I just thought you’d like the sight, brother,” she says. “You were the last of us to wed-- unless Elise decides that boys aren’t gross sometime soon-- and I’ve never seen you more relaxed.”

“I--” Xander says, knitting his brows together and closing his eyes, “--I can’t relax, Camilla, we’re in the midst of an imperialistic conquest. I can’t--”

“Hush, Xander,” Camilla says. “When was our last battle? It feels as though it’s been years. I’ve spent so much time watching Ophelia grow up, then my lovely niece and nephews… Can’t we just pretend that there isn’t a war waiting for us back in our realm?”

“No,” Xander says. “No, we can’t. It feels like a dream in this world, I know. But this world, and everything that comes with it, it will feel like a dream when we go back. That alone is something that weighs on me, Camilla.”

What constitutes _everything that comes with it_ is left unspoken. Hopping through various dimensions, leaving time frozen over the course of the bloody war that is waiting to ravage both Hoshido and Nohr, frolicking and fighting, drinking and dancing and falling in love… It’s completely messed with Xander’s perception of time. It still doesn’t feel right to him, and he hates to admit it, but the product of their small party’s propensity for dimension travel, his own nieces and nephews, don’t feel right, either.

When he opens his eyes to continue, he sees Camilla glaring daggers at him. He briefly wonders if she’s learned a spell for telepathy. Ophelia was planned, he knows, and Camilla is fiercely protective of her. 

Then the moment passes and Camilla smiles back at him. “Please, do me a favor and try to relax on your wedding night, Xander? Your wife made some delicious Hoshidan soups and food for all of us, and I for one am looking forward to going back home and eating my leftovers with my family.” 

The word ‘family’ is spoken with a deliberate, defiant edge to it. Oh, family… if only he knew what that meant to everyone else around him. He barely knows what it means to himself. 

Still, Xander tries to smile and nods to her. “Goodnight, sister.”

Camilla squeezes his shoulder, for once not padded in armor but instead clothed in the finest Nohrian silk, and leaves him alone in the middle of the cold night breeze, a few petals dancing with it every now and again. 

___

Mozu is changed out of her robes when he steps into the house. Her hair is undone, flowing down in dark waves to the middle of her back, which is turned to him at the moment as she boils a kettle on the stove.

She’s so beautiful without ever trying, Xander thinks. _Beautiful._ A word that barely meant a thing to him before her. A word that he can’t seem to get out of his mind nowadays…

Just then, he feels a cold pang in his chest and his back tenses reflexively, as though he needs to check for danger _right here, right now._

Is something wrong? Could there be a danger here for Mozu, now that she’s married to him? Xander’s instincts are usually good. He looks around the room, but sees nothing amiss. The quarters for them, as newlyweds, are mostly sparse, with a large, simple silk bed and nightstand on one end of the room and Mozu with her stove at the other. Mozu is humming to herself, unaware of him or anything else. 

Should he go up to her? Wrap his arms around her from behind, kiss her neck, like heroes did to heroines in the bawdy plays that he and Leo snuck out to see when they were little?

Xander pauses and lowers his head as he tries to sort out his confusion. However, after a few moments, he realizes that this must be what’s causing his anxiety. He really has no idea what to do. 

He looks back up and is about to clear his throat, as though he’s just arrived late to a war council instead of greeting his new wife, but then Mozu turns around with a tired smile and holds out a tray to him. Beside two cups of steaming chamomile tea is a large sponge cake of some sort.

“Castella wagashi cake,” Mozu says proudly. “Its inspiration is part Nohrian, part Hoshidan. I knew I wanted us to eat it on our wedding day-- just the two of us, it bein’ symbolic or something. You know, two different countries at peace one day.” 

Relieved that she’s saved him from making the first move, Xander smiles. “It’s a beautiful vision.”

 _There I go again,_ he thinks, _with that word._

When they sit down to eat, Mozu cuts the cake cleanly in half. “In my village, wedding ceremonies had this tradition-- the first private meal together. It was when the two of you were considered _actual_ man ‘n wife. The other stuff was just for show.”

“We never had anything like that,” Xander says, smiling softly. He takes her small hand in his, and she smiles up at him with big, dark eyes. For a moment in time, his mind goes peacefully blank and the two of them enjoy their first meal at home, talking and laughing just like any other set of newlyweds. Somehow, Mozu finds her way onto his lap, and then he’s leaning back against the chair as she lies her head on the side of his shoulder and strokes his cheek. His eyes close. This relaxation, he thinks to himself, this trust. It’s utter bliss. 

After a few minutes of feeling Mozu’s warm body curled up beside him, letting his breathing even out as his thoughts begin to drift away, Mozu speaks again softly.

“...Xander?”

“Mhm?” he replies, half-asleep.

“Do you, uh, do you royals in Nohr have any of your own ways of, y’know, making marriages official?” her voice is soft, but hopeful.

 _Do we?_ Xander’s brain is not in the mood for thinking, but it’s well trained in it, so it only takes a few moments for him to realize that yes, there is indeed a ritual for newlyweds in the Nohr Royal Family. A very important one.

He then hopes that Mozu hasn’t felt him tense up, because she sounds flustered when she says, “Oh, I don’t-- I mean, nothing has to--”

“No,” he says, opening his eyes. Mozu is still sitting on his lap, gazing up at him through thick eyelashes. He takes her face in his and kisses her, and she leans into it eagerly. She’s warm and welcoming. Xander smiles as his lips meet her own. They kiss for a moment more, and she laces her fingers through his hair. He hears himself groan.

Then something switches in Xander’s body, and a rush of endorphins washes over him as she tugs slightly on his hair, pressing herself firmly against him. His heart begins to beat quickly, and he feels his skin grow hot.

His thoughts are going hazy again, but his body is revving up. He almost feels like it’s has turned into a magnet, seeking more contact with her own body until--

He breaks apart with a gasp. 

“No?” Mozu says. 

“No,” says Xander, trying to catch his breath. “No, er, we do not really do anything besides sleep.”

___

In bed that night, Xander leans over and gingerly wraps his arms around Mozu. It just _seems_ like the sort of thing that women like for men to do when they cuddle, and while he has never done anything like it before, Mozu smiles up at him sleepily, and gives him a peck on his lips before turning back around pressing her back against his chest. She’s only wearing a thin slip, and he’s only in his braies. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, or the morning to find that his anatomy has changed at all in his sleep, Xander thinks, how would she respond? The thought won’t help him rest easily.

“You know what made me fall in love with Prince Xander?” Mozu whispers. 

“Hm?” He hopes that his voice doesn’t sound shaky at all. 

“How kind you are without wanting nothin’ in return. You did all this stuff for me when I came to the camp, not askin’ for praise of nothin’. Mama would’ve liked you. You’re a selfless man.”

Selfless, he thinks to himself. Perhaps that’s true. He’s been self-sacrificing since he was young, as a Crown Prince needs to be, but he’s also sacrificed others. 

He’d told Mozu beforehand about the Faceless, of course, before he asked her to marry him. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t. He’d told her how it had been Nohr that created them, leaving her to process the implications. 

He’d been prepared for her to scream and cry and tell him that she never wanted to see him again, but she just walked away calmly instead. After a few days she’d come back to him.

“Thank you, Prince Xander,” she’d said. Her voice had wavered only a little, but her eyes had been steady on his. 

“For what?” He’d been incredulous. 

“I know you didn’t make the Faceless yourself-- you didn’t send ‘em on my family. Your sister and her troops saved me. Nohr is made up of the good and the bad, just like Hoshido,” Mozu had explained, sitting down beside him in the study. “But I don’t know of no one who would’ve told me something like that, just so I had the chance to walk away. You are a good man, Prince Xander. I don’t think that about all of the Nohrians, but I do think it about you.”

 _No, Mozu,_ Xander had thought, looking into her kind but serious gaze. _I’m not a good man. I sacrifice. I’ve sacrificed so many…_

She’d never met his father. She hadn’t known the way he’d grown up. She hadn’t known the live he’d taken, the people that he’d allowed to die. Xander should have told her all of that before he kissed her that first afternoon, but it’s too late now.

As Mozu’s breathing evens out into deep sleep and her body relaxes against his, Xander wonders if she’d meant anything by her question that evening: if the Nohr Royal Family had any special way of cementing their marriage. 

Because they did. In the past, royal wedded couples sometimes needed to complete the rite in bed in front of public officials to make sure that the marriage _really_ was complete. In the midst of war, nothing like that was possible, thank the gods, because Xander would have died from embarrassment needing to do something like that with Mozu in front of sly, skeptical politicians and clerics.

Camilla had been the only sibling of his to seem gung-ho and eager about _that_ particular part of the Nohrian marriage tradition to begin with, and from the way that Odin was grinning ear-to-ear the next day while Laszlow ribbed him and Selena rolled her eyes, she’d given the rite everything she had that night. Neither Leo nor Naomi seemed eager to speak about their respective wedding nights, although the presence of Xander’s niece and nephews indicated that _it_ had happened at some point. 

Xander didn’t really like to contemplate it.

What would Mozu think, he wonders, if she knew that he had no instinct for bedsport? Of course young, pretty women had smiled and flirted with him in the past, but he’d always ignored them. Not only was he more focused on his duties as heir apparent, but he also knew what those women ultimately wanted. A spot beside him on the throne, or at least a position as concubine. And he didn’t know if he ever wanted to invite them into his family.

No, he’d put off inviting a woman into a family headed by a murderous patriarch and constrained by greed and bloodlust for as long as possible. Up until the war started, and his little sister got thrown into the midst of chaos, and the whole army had up and transported to another dimension where it was too damn easy to forget about what was waiting for them back at home…

And Mozu, Xander realizes, sweet Mozu, whose family and village in Hoshido had been killed by the monsters his father creates…

He holds her close to him that night, but he doesn’t sleep well himself. 

___

The next week is an exercise in routine. Mozu and Xander fight side by side, eat side by side, talk and cook together and she manages to walk him through a very basic soup recipe from her village. Not the one he’d promised to make her, but a small step in the right direction. 

_She’s my wife, now,_ Xander thinks, _She knows who I am, and she’s alright with it. I have nothing to fear._

But every night as they lie down together, he pretends to fall asleep within seconds. Mozu says nothing about his improbable levels of sleepiness all week, but he begins to see small looks of worry and disappointment in the morning, while she gets dressed for the day. 

By the end of the week, he decides that he’s had enough. He will finish their marriage traditions, just as she asked him.

When Mozu comes home a week after their wedding, he’s already at the stove with all of the soup ingredients she’d listed for her mother’s special recipe splayed out on the counter beside him. 

“Mozu,” he says, giving her a shaky grin, “You’re just in time-- I was going to--”

“Xander,” Mozu says, “the potatoes are burning.” 

“The what?” Xander looks over at the frying pan and steps back when he sees black wisps of smoke streaming up into the air from the top of the sizzling, half-charred potatoes. “...Those can burn?”

“Yeah, of course,” Mozu says, unruffled, before she turns the heat down and opens the window next to the oven. She smiles over at him. “You’re tryin’ to make my mama’s old recipe, aren’t ya?”

“Well,” Xander says, and he can feel himself turning bright red-- a sort of vulnerability that he’s not used to nor comfortable with-- “--it was supposed to be a surprise. But--”

Mozu laughs then, and Xander looks up at her. He’d approached this recipe with meticulous caution, as though one wrong move would cost him his marriage. Like this was a battle plan or diplomatic maneuver. One mistake ended the entire game. Yet she clearly didn’t see it that way. 

“It did surprise me,” she says, “but move over. Ya don’t have to do it all on your own. Marriage is about doing it as a team.”

___

The soup turns out much better than if he had done it alone, though worse than if she had done it alone, Xander thinks. He and Mozu wash the dishes together (there aren’t many, with a table for just two) and then she sits down on the bed with a heavy sigh, untying her hair from its bands and stretching out languidly. 

“Tired?” Xander says, sitting next to her. Mozu smiles.

“A little,” she says. Xander raises his hand, with only a moment’s hesitation, to rub circles along her back. Mozu sighs. 

“Thank you, sweetie.”

 _Sweetie._ A corner of Xander’s mouth quirks up at her pet name. He rather likes it. 

After a few moments of rubbing Mozu’s back, then her shoulders, Xander feels his heart begin to race again, heat surfacing on his skin and his breath catches. Just like that, the energy in the room has changed, and Mozu seems to have noticed. She turns her head to him, taking his flushed face in and licking her lips just a bit. Xander’s own mouth feels dry suddenly, and he swallows. 

Mozu sighs again and leans against him, and he takes it as a sign to keep going. His hands glide down her back, then under her slip, and a small moan escapes her lips as he finds her breast. He can already feel his own arousal, building between his legs, along the surface of his flushed face, in the quick and labored breaths that he’s taking as she turns to face him, bringing his lips to hers.

This kissing is different from the kisses that they’ve shared in the past. Even their passionate kisses, in the privacy of a study room or his own quarters, have been restrained, Xander realizes now. Mozu has wrapped her legs around his waist as he leans back on the bedpost, and her kisses are growing faster, hungrier. He hadn’t thought that she’d respond this easily. It’s almost as though she’s not new to any of it.

 _Does that bother me?_ Xander thinks, before his thoughts are cut short when Mozu shifts in his lap and brushes against his erection. Xander gasps into her mouth, and he even thinks he hears her giggle slightly. Then she bites his lip, before turning to nibble along his jawline. Xander puts a hand on her waist as she knots her fist with his hair again and tugs gently, exposing his neck as she plants kisses along his jugular. 

Part of Xander wants to resist, not because he doesn’t want _her_ (on the contrary, his body seems to be aching for the pleasures he’s denied himself until now) but because there’s something _wrong_ with this vulnerability. Isn’t that what father taught them all? Never to let someone get so close? Logically, he knows, Mozu is no threat, no. She’s the love of his life, and yet his logical mind is having a difficult time keeping up with his warring instincts. 

One side of him says, _I want her **now,**_ while the other side says, _don’t be so vulnerable!_ Xander doesn’t know which side to listen to, until with a heavy groan, he turns Mozu over onto her back and hovers above her.

Looking back up at him, Mozu doesn’t seem terribly upset at this turn of events until Xander leans down and tries to kiss her neck the way she kissed his. 

“Um, Xander-- Xander, ow!” she says, and he snaps out of his heated attempts at lovemaking in an instant. 

“Mozu?” Xander says. “What’s wrong-- I haven't hurt you, have I--?”

“No, listen,” Mozu says, smiling slightly. “Are you actually biting me? Hickeys ain’t supposed to be like that-- look, here.”

She puts a hand on his chest and motions for him to lie down. He does so, and looks up at her leaning over him. She straddles his hips like she would a horse or a pegasus, and while the sight is slightly confusing, it also stirs feelings of carnal hunger in his stomach and below that. Xander can feel his arousal throbbing between her legs and she settles down over him and places her mouth softly against his neck.

When she brushes against his erection again, and her lips trace his jawline, Xander tries to stifle a groan, only half-managing it. He doesn’t realize that he’s closed his eyes until Mozu’s voice in his ear takes him by surprise.

“See… I’m not really biting… I’m just sucking,” she murmurs. She does it again, sucking gently at the spot just under his jaw. If she were an assassin, she could probably stick a needle into the artery just underneath her lips and he would bleed out helplessly before her, but for some reason knowing that-- and knowing that she won’t, and that he’s safe, and that he trusts her and that he _loves_ her only makes the feeling more delicious and sensual. As if he's trying to command his fight-or-flight instincts to settle down, Xander deliberately sighs and relaxes his muscles.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Mozu’s voice whispers into his ear again. She sounds slightly smug, and when she nibbles his ear and he groans helplessly, shifting underneath her, she just chuckles. 

“I’ll take that as a yes…”

Xander opens his eyes when he feels her hands snaking down his bare chest to his braies, which seem to have gotten much tighter all of a sudden. She brushes her fingers over his erection-- oh, she knows _exactly_ what she’s doing, he realizes, and smirks at him when a moan escapes his throat. 

“Can I undo ‘em?”

“Y-Yes, please,” he manages, before closing his eyes. 

Instead of undoing his braies immediately, though, Mozu lets her hand brush over his erection once more, then again, then again. Xander grunts and clutches the bedsheet beside him as his hips twitch with impatience. The feelings in his body are growing and becoming overwhelming. It’s pleasurable, _gods_ yes, it’s pleasurable, but it’s also aggravatingly hungry. Like a man in the desert who only gets thirstier the more that he drinks from the forbidden springs. 

Xander’s eyes close again as Mozu’s palms slide with more pressure and purpose over his erection. “Ah-- Mozu-- I’m going to-- please, if you don’t…” he can’t seem to finish his sentence before he groans again, and she needs no more encouragement before she undoes his braies and pulls them down to his ankles. 

He’s bare before her for only a moment before she pulls her slip up over her chest in one deft motion. Her skin is smooth, her form compact but curvaceous, and he feels himself throb harder just looking at her.

The hunger in her dazed eyes is unlike anything he’s seen from her before, either. He doesn’t have to beg her again before she’s pulled him up against her in a heated kiss as she grinds her pussy over his shaft. 

Xander can only kiss her for so long before he breaks apart to breathe, to let out a moan that only seems to entice her further. When she slips her tongue into his mouth, he bites it on accident; they manage to laugh and pick up their rhythm again quickly without a second thought. 

He remembers what she said about hickeys, how to suck and not bite, and he leaves them all across her neck and collarbone while she starts touch herself, moaning his name to his absolute pleasure. He still hasn’t had his release; she’s been focusing on herself since she pulled him up to her, but then her eyes screw shut and her toes curl and she lets out a whimper into his shoulder before collapsing against him.

Xander, still flushed and breathless and aching, just barely manages to collect his thoughts and ask if she’s done before Mozu has bent down and begun stroking him again.

“Lie back,” she commands, and he obeys happily. Her palm is slick with his arousal and her own, and pulsing waves of _pleasure_ and _good_ and _yes_ and _beautiful_ spread from his member to the rest of his body. He closes his eyes. 

“Mozu,” he moans, and she lets out a breathy laugh. “ _Gods,_ Mozu, ugh…”

That’s when he realizes that she’s also stroking his ballsack, and it feels even more pleasurable, more comforting, somehow, that he can only groan again and close his eyes. 

“Mozu… I…”

Her lips close over the wet tip of his head, and her tongue rubs against it as her hands keep their rhythm against his shaft and ballsack. Xander stops trying to speak to her, but as the pleasure builds and builds, he feels his hips beginning to buck into her mouth. 

“Ah-- Mo--” his breathing is more erratic than ever, and his fists have balled up with the bedsheets on either side of the bed. This feels _so_ good, _so_ right, to think that he ever-- that he ever--

“Mozu, I’m going to to-- gods, ah, don’t stop, just don’t--” he cries, and to her credit she doesn’t. With one final groan, Xander feels a wave of intense, indescribable pleasure coursing through his body and spilling into her mouth. He lies back on the sheets, trying to catch his breath. 

After a few moments of pure bliss and relaxation, Mozu has wrapped her arms around Xander’s chest and is looking up at him with the same innocent expression that she always wears. But now they’re bare before each other, full husband and wife in the eyes of Nohr. 

“I love you,” Mozu says. 

“I love you too,” Xander kisses her for a long moment, hesitation gone. “Now I see why there’s all this fuss about sex… I never…”

“Oh,” Mozu says, like she didn’t figure it out while they were in the midst of it. 

“It’s a good thing that you knew what you were doing though,” he says. “You were incredible.”

Mozu is silent for a moment, and Xander can feel their hearts beating next to one another, hers faster than his now.

“I’m not easy, or anything like that.”

“I never said you were--”

“I had a sweetheart back in the village. We were gonna be married, but it didn’t work out.”

A pang of guilt pierces Xander’s chest and he begins to sit up and apologize, tell her that she is free to leave if she wants to and he’ll never hold it against her, before Mozu presses a hand to his cheek and shakes her head.

“He cheated on me and ran off with another lady from another town,” she says. “I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t want to. I have the best husband in the world right here in my arms.”

Something about how strongly and genuinely she says that makes Xander collapse again, leaning his head against her shoulder as she lowers the two of them back down onto the mattress. He takes one side of the blanket and she takes the other as they smooth out the sheets and cover themselves with the blanket. 

“I never thought that I was a good man. I didn’t allow myself women,” Xander says by way of explanation. “But… this is the last rite of marriage for the Nohrian Royal Family. The consummation. I owe it to you, as your groom…”

Mozu looks up at him in astonishment before blurting out, “You don’t owe me nothing, Xander! No one owes anyone _sex--_ I mean… did you _want_ to?”

Did he want to? He had his doubts, but, Xander thinks, those weren’t really doubts. They were fears, fears that she’d put to rest long ago. Did he want to, without those fears getting in the way?

“Yes, gods, yes, Mozu,” he sighs, pulling her close to him. “I wanted to.” 

“Good, ‘cuz I really liked it.”

“I 'really liked it', as well,” he murmurs, smiling. Now that he’s utterly spent, he wants nothing more than to drift off to sleep with her in his arms. 

Mozu kisses him on the cheek, then wraps an arm around his bare chest and whispers in his ear. 

“I’ll teach you more about all that then, and cooking too,” she says. “You’ve taught me how to fight monsters and be brave-- it’s the least I can do. You don’t have to figure all this out on your own, that’s what a wife is _for.”_

Xander is about to reply before sleep finally claims him, the deepest and most satisfied sleep that he’s had in a long time. Mozu smiles and curls up under his arm, kissing his jaw one last time before she falls asleep as well.

**Author's Note:**

> PS: This is the only fanfiction where I ever had to look up what men's medieval underwear was called. A braies, apparently. :T
> 
> I tend to think of Fates Armies as going through what feels like years and decades of happy adventuring in other realms (like Lilith's Realm) and raising their children in the DeepRealm, before coming back to the main plotline. In Lilith's Realm, the main plotline feels like a dream to them, while in their own, memories of Lilith's realm feel vague and dreamlike instead.


End file.
